R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me

[alexseanchai]

Respect for our country (and by 'our' I refer specifically to USians) can include being silent and still during the national anthem. It also can include wearing a flag pin and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It does not have to include such tangible markers of respect for those symbols of our country.

Respect for our country is making sure our countryfolk can eat enough, pay their rent, get medical treatment for their broken arms and high cholesterol and depression and desire to control their reproduction. Respect for our country is making sure that one US resident is treated just like another until their behavior—not their genitals or gender or skin tone or household income or childhood household income or with whom they prefer to have sex—their behavior dictates a difference in treatment. Respect for our country is not sending our soldiers off to get shot at without a really good reason, and not leaving them to get shot at when that reason goes stale. Respect for our country is making sure nothing will keep us from paying our debts!

Insisting I be silent and still during the national anthem, while insisting far more loudly (if not at that precise moment) that single-by-choice parents and same-sex couples and people who aren't their assigned-at-birth gender are undermining the country by their mere existence, that black and Latina people are lazy and female people are ill-suited to lucrative and/or male tasks, that any attempt to ensure everyone in this country can pay their fucking rent is doomed to failure and should not be begun—

Well, that just makes you sound like you're interested in the appearance of respect for our country, not its actuality. The country is the countrypeople. Lack of respect for the people is lack of respect for the country.

And no, mother dear, I am not watching another moment of the Super Bowl with you.

Comments

[tptigger]

*hugs* I wish we lived closer together, you could come hide here and watch the puppy bowl with other geeks.

[alexseanchai]

*hugs*

I'm perfectly content to sit here and vid, really. Except for how vidding is so not my native medium and Supernatural doesn't have a scene I need to fit this lyric and now in hopes of curing that I am aheming a movie about human trafficking on the grounds that it contains 2008-era Katie Cassidy and might have her on a phone.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

You actually put your finger right on the problem: people care far more about appearance than substance. They would rather chant their "America is #1" fantasies without stopping to consider that America is #1 in things like prison population and in the abyssal company of, say, South Africa on things like maternal mortality.

Re: Well...

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, I know what the problem is, but I prefer to believe people are arguing in good faith, so when I encounter a problem with their argument that makes it clear they're not, I pretend the problem is something I haven't discerned that merely looks like something proving they're arguing in bad faith. If they double down I drop the pretense.

Which now I've typed it out looks stupid.

Re: Well...

[redsixwing]

Nah, this is basically how I operate too. (If it's stupid, you're in company.)

I find extending presumption of good faith to people even when they appear to not be using it prevents me from wanting to bug off up a mountain more than a reasonable portion of the time.

[pauamma]

I would(*) pledge allegiance to the Republic and to the flag which stands for it. Not, however, "to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands".

(*) Not a US citizen, so the point is moot.

[alexseanchai]

Yes, definitely appreciating that distinction. Also would like 'under God' the fuck out of the Pledge, anti-atheist-and-polytheist-and-non-Christian-monotheist Red Scare nonsense that it is. Won't, unsurprisingly, say the Pledge as is.

[julian_griffith]

Co-signed.